You can just as easily replace "rural America" with "black America" and make the same exact point. Lack of empathy goes both ways.
Where was the movement fighting to enable Rural America to thrive? Which is over 40% of America!!! That's a lot of people!! I care about every single American including rural America.
"There was an extreme amount of empathy for black America leading up to the election in the majority of the cities and America. Black lives matter. I think that's great and Black america absolutely has it's own issues. Not taking away from that. Where was the movement fighting to enable Rural America to thrive? Which is over 40% of America!!! That's a lot of people!! I care about every single American including rural America."
What part of that supported Trump? What part of that even brought up Trump at all? All I was saying was there was a large public outcry for black people who were treated poorly, which is a serious issue.
Now me bringing up rural America and there problems makes me a racist? I beg you to look into your own views and really ask yourself if what I said was trying to protect people I know in rural America or attack black lives matter. I care so deeply for every American, but that includes rural America.
You mean things like farm subsidies?
Or the rise to power of those champions of rural America: the Republicans, who now control the Executive branch, both houses of Congress, and arguably the Supreme Court as well. I'm sure rural America has only the brightest prospects with them in charge.
PS. I am not a republican. I'm just basing this on what the parties chose to support in their campaigns.
Seeing what the GOP healthcare plan and proposed budgets are, they do not care about rural communities. They say they do, but their voting patterns are entirely at odds of what they preach.
Why don't you ask your friends in Rural America? Why hasn't there been an organized movement starting there?
It's perhaps not optimal, but it's not like white people started BLM or straight people started the campaign for gay marriage or colonizers started #NoDAPL. Minorities have had to fight for GENERATIONS to make progress towards getting their needs heard. Why aren't rural folk doing the same?
Why aren't you asking for rural folk to step up? Or if they are stepping up, why aren't you tell us about that / promoting them / actively helping them?
The response to the crack epidemic was to treat users as "junkies" and criminals, and to impose draconian sentencing laws (much harsher for crack than more expensive powder cocaine, mind you). In the current heroin epidemic, you see even hardcore conservative politicians like Christie advocate for compassion and treatment. In fact, I don't think the re-evaluation of mandatory sentencing laws for drug crimes would even be up for debate if white areas weren't also hit hard now.
This is what is meant by "Black Lives Matter", because for a very long time they quite frankly didn't, at least judging by larger government responses to their problems.
So there is a sense that crack users sought reckless fun, while opiate users were just trying to get medical treatment.
Yes, many people got addicted to opiates originally through actual episodes of physical pain, but many didn't. And trying to pretend that that's the reason we treated black inner-city addicts like complete shit, but white folks get compassion and empathy, is absurd. It also doesn't explain why powder cocaine, which only rich people could afford, was criminalized much more heavily than crack, which was for poor people.
There exist white crack addicts. They also don't get sympathy.
The key question: can we reliably assume that an addiction started for recreational reasons? If yes: no sympathy.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_America
15% of America is rural. Note that you're grotesquely overrepresented in politics.
Consider this:
> Trump took 2,584 counties that together account for 36 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Clinton won just 472 counties — less than 20 percent of Trump’s take — but those counties account for 64 percent of GDP.
--- https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/17/...
The urban areas are financially funding the rural areas. Essentially, the structure of the rural economy is not one conducive to significant economic success in modern society.
I would suggest the single most reliably effective way for someone graduating in 2017 in rural America to financially succeed in life (and to have the most cultural opportunity) would be to get a STEM/business-oriented degree and move to NYC for work - or move and then go to college, then work in NYC.
First, in terms of taxes and benefits, urban areas vote for that stuff. It's only fair that they pay. The rural areas are trying to cut costs.
Second, one could argue that the economic activity in urban areas is sort of stolen from rural areas. There was a time when many more businesses were in non-urban areas. Activity was moved to urban areas, and often then overseas while perhaps retaining some corporate leadership and marketing in our urban areas. This, or the laws that allowed and encouraged it, is essentially a brutal attack on rural America.
All of these are not only not empathized with by Republicans, whose base and support comes largely from rural America, but actively hated, discriminated against, and oppressed.
Have you ever spoken to a Republican? For a group that 'actively hates' black people, don't you think its a little strange this man led the RNC [1]?
>House Speaker Paul Ryan, also a Republican, "clearly disagrees" with King's comments, a spokeswoman told reporters.
Paul Ryan is hardly a fringe in the Republican Party, he's the speaker of the house.
You're going to need some actual stats showing 100:1 is the ratio of racists to non-racists. Anything else is conjecture.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_America